Weekly newspaper from Albany, Texas that includes local, county, and state news along with extensive advertising.

Daily newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Holliday, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Archer City, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Semi-weekly newspaper from Bastrop, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with advertising.

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Photograph of a large two-story building behind a fence bearing a sign reading "Private Property" in Decatur, Texas. There are trees in the foreground and bushes against the side of the building.

Weekly newspaper from Canadian, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with some advertising.

Photograph of a sign reading "El Castile" by trees in Decatur, Texas.

Weekly newspaper from Comanche, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Cooper, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

News release about the naming of attorney Angel Reyes to the DART board of directors.

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Federal agencies are required to use the procedures contained in OMB Circular A-76 in determining whether commercial services should be performed by government personnel or through contracts with private-sector entities. In general, the circular instructs agencies to base these decisions on competitions among public and private-sector entities conducted in accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). Under the FAR, agencies have broad discretion in establishing the criteria they will use to select the winners of these competitions. An agency may decide, for example, that selection of the lowest priced, acceptable offer would best meet its needs. The FAR advises that this may be appropriate when requirements are clearly defined and the risk of unsuccessful performance is minimal. On the other hand, the FAR says that it may be in the best interest of an agency to provide for selecting other than the low offer when requirements are less definite, development work is required, or the risk of unsuccessful performance is high. An evaluation scheme that allows for considering the relative importance of both price and technical factors (such as an offeror's management capability, experience, or ability to apply …

Weekly newspaper from Dublin, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Electra, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Plastic behavior has previously been observed in metallic interconnects undergoing high current density electromigration (EM) loading. In this study of Cu interconnects, using the synchrotron technique of white beam X-ray microdiffraction, we have further found preliminary evidence of a texture correlation. In lines with strong (111) textures, the extent of plastic deformation is found to be relatively large compared to that of weaker textures. We suggest that this strong (111) texture may lead to an extra path of mass transport in addition to the dominant interface diffusion in Cu EM. When this extra mass transport begins to affect the overall transport process, then the effective diffusivity, D{sub eff}, of the EM process is expected to deviate from that of interface diffusion only. This would have fundamental implications. We have some preliminary observations that this might be the case, and we report its implications for EM lifetime assessment in this manuscript.

Successful exploitation of the vast amount of heat stored beneath the earth’s surface in hydrothermal and fluid-limited, low permeability geothermal resources would greatly expand the Nation’s domestic energy inventory and thereby promote a more secure energy supply, a stronger economy and a cleaner environment. However, a major factor limiting the expanded development of current hydrothermal resources as well as the production of enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) is insufficient knowledge about the chemical processes controlling subsurface fluid flow. With funding from past grants from the DOE geothermal program and other agencies, we successfully developed advanced equation of state (EOS) and simulation technologies that accurately describe the chemistry of geothermal reservoirs and energy production processes via their free energies for wide XTP ranges. Using the specific interaction equations of Pitzer, we showed that our TEQUIL chemical models can correctly simulate behavior (e.g., mineral scaling and saturation ratios, gas break out, brine mixing effects, down hole temperatures and fluid chemical composition, spent brine incompatibilities) within the compositional range (Na-K-Ca-Cl-SO4-CO3-H2O-SiO2-CO2(g)) and temperature range (T < 350°C) associated with many current geothermal energy production sites that produce brines with temperatures below the critical point of water. The goal of research carried out under DOE grant …

Application of time domain reflectometry (TDR) in soil hydrology often involves the conversion of TDR-measured dielectric permittivity to water content using universal calibration equations (empirical or physically based). Deviations of soil-specific calibrations from the universal calibrations have been noted and are usually attributed to peculiar composition of soil constituents, such as high content of clay and/or organic matter. Although it is recognized that soil disturbance by TDR waveguides may have impact on measurement errors, to our knowledge, there has not been any quantification of this effect. In this paper, we introduce a method that estimates this error by combining two models: one that describes soil compaction around cylindrical objects and another that translates change in bulk density to evolution of soil water retention characteristics. Our analysis indicates that the compaction pattern depends on the mechanical properties of the soil at the time of installation. The relative error in water content measurement depends on the compaction pattern as well as the water content and water retention properties of the soil. Illustrative calculations based on measured soil mechanical and hydrologic properties from the literature indicate that the measurement errors of using a standard three-prong TDR waveguide could be up to 10%. We …

Daily newspaper from Chickasha, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

This report describes provisions in the 2008 farm bill (P.L. 110-234) related to Section 32 appropriations and how non-transferred money (funding not put toward child nutrition programs) may be spent. It includes an overfiew of how Section 32 funds have generally been used and the implications of the new restrictions.

The Federal Protective Service (FPS) -- within U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) -- is responsible for protecting federal government property, personnel, visitors, and customers, including property leased by the General Services Administration (GSA). FPS currently employs over 15,000 contract security guards to protect federal property. DHS intends, according to its FY2009 budget justification, to continue the use of contract security guards to focus FPS activities on maintaining security policy and standards, conducting building security assessments, and monitoring federal agency compliance with security standards.

Other written product issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The federal government will need to make the most of its resources to meet the emerging challenges of the 21st century. As new priorities emerge, policymakers have demonstrated interest in user fees as a means of financing new and existing services. User fees can be designed to reduce the burden on taxpayers to finance the portions of activities that provide benefits to identifiable users above and beyond what is normally provided to the public. By charging the costs of those programs or activities to beneficiaries, user fees can also promote economic efficiency and equity. However, to achieve these goals, user fees must be well designed. GAO was asked to study how user fee design characteristics may influence the effectiveness of user fees. Specifically, GAO examined how the four key design and implementation characteristics of user fees--how fees are set, collected, used, and reviewed--may affect the economic efficiency, equity, revenue adequacy, and administrative burden of cost-based fees. GAO reviewed economic and policy literature on federal and nonfederal user fees, including prior GAO work, and used relevant case examples to illustrate different types of design elements and the …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Navy faces affordability challenges as it supports a high pace of operations and increasing ship procurement costs. The Navy has used multiple crews on some submarines and surface ships and has shown it to increase a ship's operational availability. GAO was asked to evaluate the extent to which the Navy, for ship rotational crewing, has (1) employed a comprehensive management approach, (2) developed and implemented guidance, (3) systematically collected, analyzed data, and reported findings, and (4) systematically collected and used lessons learned. To conduct this work, GAO analyzed Department of Defense (DOD) and Navy documentation and best practices for transformation, conducted focus groups, and interviewed DOD and Navy officials."

Congress appropriated, in P.L. 110-329, approximately $4.36 billion for state and local homeland security assistance programs. This is approximately $135 million more than was appropriated in FY2008 ($4.22 billion). Congress chose not to fund the Real ID program in FY2009, however, it did appropriate funding ($2 million) for a new assistance program titled the Center for Counterterrorism and Cyber Crime at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont.